10 Famous Video Game Franchises That Haven't Made Anything Good In Years

2. Alone In The Dark

Like Duke Nukem, Alone in the Dark is one of those games that helped define a genre, but by now has way more bad games than good ones. Before Resident Evil burst onto the scene, Infogrames' Lovecraftian trend-setter helped set the foundations of survival-horror, but sadly didn't have what it took to build on those sturdy bases.

The original trilogy was well enough received, but even those three games struggled to maintain the interest of an audience, with the rapid release of each sequel making it clear that they were being pushed out as fast as possible.

As a result, Alone in the Dark went on a short hiatus, and has struggled to reinvent itself ever since. 2001's The New Nightmare was a solid effort, taking more cues from Resident Evil more than its own history, but it didn't sell, and the brand was rebooted again under new publisher Atari in 2008.

This release similarly boasted some neat ideas - especially when it came to the revolutionary fire effects and then-novel TV episode framing - but didn't come together as a cohesive whole and, once again, struggled to find an audience.

The lowest point came with the next game though, Alone in the Dark: Illumination, which launched in 2015 on PC and amounted to little more than a barebones shooter farted out to coast on the name alone. Fans and critics tore it to shreds, and the series hasn't been seen since.